Franchise Marketing Plans and Strategies

It goes without saying that you must first have a franchise marketing plan and strategy to sell franchises in order to succeed as a franchisor. To sell franchises, you must start by identifying prospective franchisees and getting them interested in your concept. To do that, the franchisor needs to know where they can most effectively advertise and what marketing message will most likely resonate with their targeted franchisee.

That is where the iFranchise Group comes in. We know better than anyone where and how you need to promote your opportunity to attract franchise prospects.

So how can we say we are the best in the industry? Simply stated, we have the best data and the most experience.

Through our franchise sales outsourcing affiliate, Franchise Dynamics, we have access to the statistical data on millions of dollars in franchise advertising expenditures. Between that data and data we collect from our own clients, we are able to track literally hundreds of thousands of franchise sales leads every year. We know where these leads came from. We know costs per lead by media. We know close rates. And since these leads represented many hundreds of sales, we can put that knowledge to work for you.

No one else in franchising has similar data. Period.

But we go one step further, before developing your franchise marketing and lead generation plan, we will often conduct primary research on your target franchisee. And since we have been interviewing prospective franchisees using a prescribed format for over a decade, we can combine our historical research with your concept specific research to develop a plan that is customized to your specific franchise candidate and growth needs.

Our typical franchise marketing plan will outline the specific marketing activities we recommend you take to generate leads, as well as the steps you will need to take in order to implement these marketing activities. This plan will cover the areas of public relations, social media, print advertising, direct mail, trade show attendance, internet utilization, and utilization of brokers and other referral sources. It will also include specific recommendations as to media mix, lead tracking, and targeted advertising effectiveness rates (costs-per-lead and costs-per-franchise sale by media type). In essence, it will provide you with a detailed, step-by-step approach to franchise lead generation.

In addition to franchise marketing plans, the iFranchise Group has a complete in-house creative team specializing in marketing franchise opportunities.

While one might be inclined to think that your local advertising agency might be able to handle the development of print ads, brochures, websites, and other collateral materials, the sale of a franchise is a very different animal.

On the one hand, the message you are sending to your prospective franchisee needs to communicate the excitement and the potential of the business and along with the message that the business is simple enough that they can succeed. At the same time, the underlying message must also communicate that the business is complex enough that if they try to enter the business without you, they will be more likely to fail. Clearly, this is a line that many consumer advertising agencies are not accustomed to walking. Add to that the fact that franchise advertising is regulated in eight states (and must be shown to regulators in these states prior to registration), and it is often unlikely that a consumer ad agency will have the specialized knowledge to develop effective franchise marketing materials.

To learn more about our franchise marketing services, call one of our franchise consultants now at (971) 4 3477140. Or click here for a copy of our 90-minute seminar video on How to Franchise Your Business, or request a copy of our free webinar on “How Many Franchises Can I Expect to Sell,” which goes into much greater detail on these franchise marketing issues.

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